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Coming back from Paris. A beautiful weekend spent in Burgundy tasting wine and driving through the small villages of France. Perfect — except without Mike who would have loved it. Makes me think of traveling with him for the rest of our lives — getting to — married. Sometimes it still doesn’t seem real, the word, married, the word husband.

Claremore, OK — Staying here in Will Rogers’ hometown (or near it). On my way to Iowa City tomorrow. How will that feel?

It’s been so long and him completely, completely out of my life. I can’t imagine the last time, and everything that city used to be.

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When they lead him out of the police car, his face is a ghost, like his skin had been burned right off and all that was left was a white sheet. But his eyes, his eyes hit me like a bullet, as I drove by and parked my car on the next block to buy a fried cherry pie.

Months. This journal has been in Milwaukee since Josie’s wedding — and sleeping next to Mike makes me write in this less.

Nothing new. School, teaching, trying to write poems. How I want to. Eleanor Wilner is in town. I’ve spent the past two days driving her around. Poet’s notice things. They tell you what they see. Describe in interesting ways — “the birds are doing their sunset swirl.” I dream of being like them. If only …

Afternoon. Laziness. Out the window, the wind sways the trees. I think of you. Wonder if you even know I’m married. How would you know? Do you sense it? Will I ever see you again? Eight years, ten, and then nothing.

Sunlight on the leaves, if you were there, in my backyard, by the fence, waiting. It cannot happen. I let go. I let her have you. I did not fight. I must not have loved you as much as I claimed to.

Life is not what we think it will be. It breaks you and rebuilds you into someone you no longer life, someone passionless and uneventful.

How to be a writer? I look at my life and wonder how to get outside of myself in terms of words. How to be a poet? Often times I don’t know. My life is not much right now. Too much TV and Internet. How to break through laziness. The need to be more than I am …

Reading Montale then Ann Marie Macari, I think I’m starting to get it — poetry. The mysteriousness of language, why form may be good for me. Writing to the you not the reader about the you (Montale) and Macari’s surprises within short poems.

How to do this? Keep reading more. Write without thinking. What I keep striving for — approval?